Browsers with PNG Support

Maintenance Note

The PNG-supporting applications and toolkits pages are no longer being
actively updated; for several years already, it's been safe to assume
that virtually any bitmap-capable image app supports PNG. Corrections are still
welcome, particularly for "repurposed domains" (park-spam), but
new applications are no longer being added.

The Web, of course, was one of the main targets for PNG support since
progressive display was/is so important to those browsing over a low-speed
link (like Greg, at the time). GIF's interlacing scheme isn't very good,
and JPEG's progressive mode was still catching on; PNG's
seven-pass, two-dimensional scheme was designed
to fill this gap. Likewise, PNG's alpha-channel support (including "RGBA
palette" mode) and support for automatic gamma correction are particularly
useful on the Web--at least where fully and correctly supported by browsers.
This page lists standard 2D browsers; see the appropriate pages for listings
of VRML browsers and other
3D applications.

Here are quick links to the browser section on the PNG Status page and to
the "Big Two" browsers on this one:

As with the other applications pages,
links to home WWW sites or to downloadable versions are provided where known,
but if a link is broken, check the location and see if an updated version
is available (and please tell Greg!).
Relevant operating systems or platforms are printed in (parenthesized
italics). If the browser or plug-in includes HTML-editing capabilities
that extend to converting or modifying images on the page, it is noted as
"read/write" support.

These are listed alphabetically, more or less:

1X [Science Traveller
International] (Win32) - all versions; read-only;
no transparency support as of version 0.12b; reportedly broken OBJECT
support; may require ActiveX for all features.

ANT Fresco [ANT]
(RISC OS, others) - all versions; read-only; binary transparency
only; commercial. (This was the browser originally chosen for Oracle's Network Computer in early 1996. As of March 1999, ArgoNet had taken over sales and
support of ANT software for RISC OS, but they themselves were
subsequently bought out by Freedom2, and that arrangement appears to
have ended. As of late 2001, ANT is once again selling Fresco, but this
time to the embedded market--set-top box manufacturers, PDA makers, etc.
Linux- and Windows-based demo versions are supposedly available upon
request.)

AOL Browser - see Internet Explorer below

Arachne [Arachne Labs]
(DOS/386, Linux/SVGA, Linux/GGI) - version 1.07(?) and later;
read-only; no transparency support; shareware (freeware for
non-commercial use). (PNG is not supported in the DOS version "on
computers which are not compatible with i386"; the 16bit.apm
downgrade disables PNG support entirely. Linux versions require ImageMagick convert
or possibly png2bmp.)

Arena
[W3C, Yggdrasil et al.] (Unix/X)
- version 0.98b and later; read-only; full
alpha support (except uses its own "sandy" background
pattern; screenshots); full gamma
support; full 16/48-bit PNG image support; progressive display of pages
but not of individual images; freeware with source. (As of beta-3b,
W3C development
ceased in favor of Amaya, above; an Internet-based development
team hosted at Yggdrasil's site took over. But that effort appears to
have died, too, as of March 1998; a final, minimally changed version
0.3.62 was released in November 1998. PNG support is [partly?]
broken in version 0.3.07 and later, but beta-3b is still available.)

AWeb
[Yvon Rozijn, AWeb developers] (Amiga)
- any version via a PNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page for several), but better and faster
support via the AWebPNG plug-in (progressive display, gamma correction,
transparency and 24-bit support; 40k; included with AWeb 3.2 and later);
read-only;
JNG support with a JNG
DataType; does not require MUI; freeware (APL) with C source
(CVS) as of
8 June 2002. Note that the AWebPNG plug-in was the third
most popular Amiga download during March 1998--outstanding!
(Click here
if link breaks.)

Browse [Acorn] (RISC OS) - all versions; read-only;
full alpha support in version 1.25
and later (including RGBA backgrounds, blended with BGCOLOR); full gamma
support; progressive display of interlaced images; commercial. (This
product has been discontinued. Alas, Acorn officially died in June
1999, taking with it this greatest of all PNG-supporting browsers. Half
of the company was bought by Pace
Micro--along with the rights to Browse, apparently--and the remainder
reformed as Element14, which has no web site as of early 2000.)

BrowseX
[Browsex Systems] (Unix/X,
Win32) - all versions; read-only; binary transparency (only
for completely transparent pixels); no gamma support; no progressive
display; uses Img, libpng and zlib; freeware
(Artistic) with source. (This is a Tcl/Tk-based browser with some handy
features. As of October 2000, it's still in beta and occasionally
crashes on pages with lots of images.)

Closure
[Gilbert Baumann]
(Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; freeware (GPL) with source.
(This is a web browser written entirely in Common Lisp [the Allegro
variant is preferred], including a basic PNG decoder
[src/renderer/png-images.lisp] and zlib/inflate implementation
[src/net/deflate.lisp]. It appears to have died quietly in
June 1999, however. Note that the home page does not link to the latest
source code; see this directory for newer code.)

Communicator - see Netscape Navigator below

CSCMail
[Steven "Count Zero" Kordik]
(Unix/GTK+) - all versions; read-only;
full alpha support
(screenshots);
requires CscHTML, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL)
with source. (This is an e-mail client written in Perl that has full
HTML-viewing capability--in fact, it includes a simple web browser. See
the toolkits page for details on the CscHTML
widget.)

Encompass
[Rodney Dawes] (Unix/GNOME) -
all versions? read/write; no transparency support? uses
gdk-pixbuf, libpng and zlib; freeware (GPL) with
source. (Encompass can save images in PNG and JPEG format [possibly
screenshots] as well as read them as part of a web page.)

Enhanced Mosaic - see Spyglass Mosaic below

Epiphany
[Epiphany
Developers] (Unix/GNOME) - all versions; read-only;
full alpha support (presumably);
freeware (GPL) with source. (Like Galeon, this browser is based
on the the Mozilla rendering engine, a.k.a. Gecko, and requires
both Mozilla and the GNOME environment to be installed in order to run.
It is intended to have a quick, simple user interface and to conform to
the GNOME accessibility guidelines [HIG].)

Firebird - see Mozilla / Firefox below

Firefox - see Mozilla / Firefox below

Flash 4 Player [Macromedia] (Win32, Mac PPC) - version 4.0 beta 1
and later; read-only. (This is generally used as a plug-in for
Navigator or Internet Explorer, but it may include
stand-alone capabilities as well. Once 4.0 is officially released,
the Linux, Solaris and Java versions will presumably be included, too.
Note that PNG images are supported within Flash 4, but it is not clear
that this plug-in can view PNGs outside of Flash 4 animations.)

Galeon
[Galeon Authors]
(Unix/GNOME) - all versions; read-only;
full alpha support (presumably);
freeware (GPL) with source. (Galeon actually uses the Mozilla
rendering engine, a.k.a. Gecko, and requires both Mozilla and the GNOME
environment to be installed in order to run.)

HTMLayout browse.exe [Terra Informatica] (Win32)
- all versions; read-only; full alpha
support; uses libpng and zlib; commercial
(freeware demo browser). (This is a freely downloadable sample
application to demonstrate the commercial HTMLayout DLL, a lightweight
HTML/CSS rendering component with no dependencies on other browsers or
browser components. PNG is supported for both foreground and background
images, including with alpha-transparency.)

IBrowse [HiSOFT
Systems] (Amiga) - version 1.2 and later natively, or
any previous version via a PNG DataType (see the toolkits / libraries page for a couple); read-only; full alpha
support? JNG support with a JNG
DataType; progressive display; requires MUI 3.8 or later; uses
libpng and zlib; commercial.

iCab [Alexander
Clauss / iCab] (Mac 68k/PPC) - all versions? read-only;
full alpha support in version 1.8
beta and later (screenshots); no
gamma support; no progressive display; commercial (beta version is
freely downloadable).

ICEbrowser [ICEsoft]
(Java) - version 5.0(?) and later; read-only;
reportedly full alpha support; no gamma
support; commercial. (This probably requires Java 2 SDK 1.3 for its
PNG support. Prior to 2002, it was known as ICE Browser and was
available separately; now it is a component within larger products.)

Internet Explorer [Microsoft] (Mac PPC, Mac OS X) - version 5.0 and later;
read-only;
full alpha support (screenshots), though broken for tiled page-
and table-background images smaller than 64x64 (switches to binary
transparency for performance reasons [should be fixed in one of next
two versions]; can work around bug by manually tiling image to be larger
than 64 pixels in at least one dimension); gamma support, including
sRGB, but inconsistent with HTML and CSS colors and unlabelled PNG and
GIF images; reportedly ICC profile support (old version only?);
progressive display of interlaced images
(replicating method); broken default handling on OS X for standalone
PNGs (versions 5.1 and 5.2 save to disk rather than view due to
QuickTime bogosity; see Matthew Rothenberg's Mac OS X Hint for simple fix);
uses libpng and zlib; freeware.
(Note that AOL 5.0 is apparently built on MSIE 4.5 or earlier, so it
has no PNG support at all. No word on later versions.)

only if "Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins" security preference
enabled; adds unnecessary scrollbars; version 4.0 renders
all OBJECTs in nested set, not just outermost

especially those created with the "Save" function in Macromedia
Fireworks--use "Export" for final PNGs

reportedly fixed in version 5.5, and doesn't affect NT or Win2k

as reported by a W3C member; another user reports that version
5.0 and later does support this

i.e., those that are simply referenced via links or opened from
disk--it can view ones that are inlined on an HTML page via IMG
tags just fine, and a registry
hack is reported to fix the standalone problem

i.e., it works on some systems but not on others, and it's not
directly related to running NT vs. Windows 9x but may have
something to do with other PNG-capable viewers being installed

Kazehakase
[Hiroyuki Ikezoe and
others] (Unix/GNOME) - all versions; read-only;
full alpha support (presumably);
freeware (GPL) with source. (Like Galeon and Epiphany,
Kazehakase is based on the Mozilla rendering engine, a.k.a.
Gecko. Unlike them, it appears not to require Mozilla to be installed
separately.
Differentiating features include remote-bookmark support, "rich"
bookmarks [i.e., with images and fragments of page text], and full-text
search in history.)

Konqueror
[KDE developers]
(Unix/KDE) - all versions? read-only;
only binary transparency prior to version 3.0;
full 32-bit alpha support as of version 3.0;
binary transparency for palette images in versions through 3.2.2;
broken single-shade transparency support for 16-bit grayscale;
MNG support when compiled with
Qt 2.2.0 or later and libmng; JNG
support as of 14 October 2003; freeware
(GPL) with source. (This was originally a file manager, kfm,
with integrated web-browsing capabilities, but it has since grown into
a very fast and complete web browser and a components-based file viewer.)

Links
[Twibright Labs] (Unix/X, Linux/SVGA, Linux/fbdev, OS/2, Win32/X,
Atheos) - version 2.0 and later; read-only; requires libpng
and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This was originally a
text-mode browser similar to Lynx, but an optional GUI interface
with PNG [and other image-format] support was added in version 2.0.)

MindWalker - see Voyager below

mMosaic
[Dauphin
Gilles / NCSA X Mosaic
Team] (Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; uses libpng
and zlib; PNG dithering is poor (libpng problem); no progressive
display; no alpha support; no simple transparency support; no gamma
support; fails on 13 valid PNGs on PngSuite
page; freeware with source. (This is an enhanced version of NCSA X
Mosaic 2.7b4, extended by Gilles to support tables, Java applets
[via the free Java virtual machine Kaffe], and the free Motif clone,
Lesstif. Development ended with version 3.7.2. The browser was further
enhanced by Winfried Szukalski to include
MNG and
JNG support, but development on
that has also ended, at version 3.8.22.)

Mosaic 95 - see SPRYNET Mosaic below

Mozilla / Firefox
[mozilla.org, Netscape Communications] (Unix/X,
Win32, Mac OS, etc.) - all versions; read-only; full
alpha support on Linux and Mac since 13 April
2000 and on Windows since 19 July 2000 (Linux screenshots), but poorer quality on sub-24-bit X displays;
broken binary transparency support in versions between June and August
2001 (bug 84980);
dithered alpha as a fallback option
on all platforms;
full gamma support; MNG and
JNG support from
12 June 2000 through 23 March 2001 and from
17 December 2001 through 12 June 2003 (in CVS,
anyway; 0.9.7 release of 21 December 2001 did not include
fix, and all 1.4 releases did have support);
progressive display (replicating method;
limits image size to dimensions of 8000 pixels;
uses libpng and zlib; freeware (NPL/MPL/GPL) with source.
(This is the mostly-rewritten-from-scratch code base on which are based
Netscape Navigator 6.0 and later, Epiphany, Galeon,
K-Meleon, Kazehakase, and Phoenix a.k.a. Mozilla
Firebird a.k.a. Mozilla Firefox.)

NetFront [ACCESS] (PocketPC, Linux) - version 2.5(?) and later;
MNG support as of version
3.0; uses libpng and zlib;
read-only; commercial. (This is an embedded web browser for PDAs,
2.5G and 3G cell phones, and other "Internet appliances." PNG and
MNG support
appear to be optional features, at least for the cell-phone versions.)

NetPositive [Be]
(BeOS) - version 2.1 and later (uses new PNG Translator in BeOS
4.5); read-only; full alpha support
as of version 2.2 (screenshots); no
gamma support; no progressive display; no support for PNGs as HTML
background images; commercial.

Netscape Navigator [Netscape Communications] (Unix/X, Win32, Mac OS,
OS/2) -
version 4.04 and later; progressive display (replicating method);
full alpha and gamma support as of
version 6.0PR2 (see Mozilla / Firefox above) but no
transparency or gamma support whatsoever in version 4.x; nearly complete
MNG and
JNG support in version 6.0 and
later (see MNG
apps page for limitations and bugs) and in older versions via Jason
Summers' MNG plug-in;
versions 4.04 through 4.76
treat black as transparent in opaque palette images with a background
chunk (test) and reportedly do even worse
with 64-bit RGBA images;
limits image size to linear
dimensions of 8000 pixels; attempts to display invalid PNGs; versions
4.04 through 4.5 have a bug in their "Accept" headers (missing comma)
that causes Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and Oracle
Application Server not to send static PNG images
(images dynamically generated by CGI or ASP scripts apparently are not
affected; bug is fixed in version 4.51 and later); uses libpng
and zlib; freeware. (Versions 2.0 and later
also support PNG via the plug-ins listed below, but note that Netscape
plug-ins currently do not support true inlined images--they only
support images inlined with Netscape's non-standard EMBED tag, which is
not usable by most other browsers, or with HTML 4.0's OBJECT tag, as long
as HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes are included in the tag. In any case,
Netscape 4.x's OBJECT support is broken, too. Version 6.0, however, is
based on Mozilla, which has excellent OBJECT, PNG and MNG
support [at least until the latter was removed again]. This product
has been discontinued. See Mozilla / Firefox above.)

QuickTime PNG plug-in [Apple] (Win32, Mac OS) - version 3.0 and
later; read-only; full gamma support? no transparency support; no
progressive display. (The plug-in actually handles several media
types. It also installs itself into every browser on the machine,
including Internet Explorer; to remove, find the appropriate Plugins
directory or directories and delete npqtplugin.dll .)

PNG Live plug-in [Siegel & Gale] (Win32) - all versions;
read-only; broken gamma support; alpha support in 2.0b1 and later
(but broken: uses PNG background chunk instead of browser
background); progressive display in 2.0b5 and later (replicating
method); uses libpng and zlib. (Development on this
product appears to have ceased as of June 1997, and the web site
was shut down in early 1999--which is unfortunate since its alpha
support was better than any other Netscape-compatible solution to
date [as of September 1999]. Version
1.0 also worked with Internet Explorer 3.0 and supported
PowerMacs as well as Win32. Version
2.0b5 was the final public release; the rumored PowerMac and
Irix ports were never completed.)

Quick View Plus [Stellent / Avantstar] (Win32, embedded) - version 4.5 and later;
read-only;
uses zlib. (This is apparently the Nth-generation
descendant of Mastersoft's Viewer 95. Mastersoft was acquired
by Frame, which was acquired by Adobe, which renamed the viewer to
Adobe File Utilities by Mastersoft before selling it to Inso
in 1997, which may have merged it with their competing Quick View
Plus viewer and licensed Jasc as a distributor in 1998. In
July 2000 the QVP portion of Inso was sold to IntraNet Solutions,
which was subsequently either acquired by or renamed to Stellent, who ported it to various PDAs and cell phones and
apparently also licensed it to Avanstar for retail sales. [As of
as of early 2004, Jasc no longer distributes it.]
Avanstar's version is available only for 32-bit Windows platforms
and appears definitely not to support any sort of conversion.)

pngplug [Silicon
Graphics] (SGI Irix/X) - all versions; read-only; also
supports RGB and MS BMP image formats. (This plug-in is available
on the Irix 6.2 update CD, along with Netscape 2.0S and half a dozen
other plug-ins.)

OmniWeb [Omni
Development] (NeXTStep/OpenStep, Mac OS X Server) - version
2.0 and later; read-only;
full alpha support in version 3.x
and later, possibly some 2.x?
(screenshots);
full gamma support; progressive display of interlaced images (sparse
method); freeware as of version 4.0 (formerly commercial). (Versions
prior to 3.0 or 3.1 were for NeXTStep/OpenStep only, and versions from
4.0 onward are for Mac OS X only.)

Opera [Opera Software] (Win32, OS/2, BeOS, Mac PPC, Mac OS X, Linux/X,
Solaris/X, Symbian OS) - version 3.51 and later
(version 6.0 and later for Symbian);
full alpha support as of version 6.0
(screenshots); broken binary
transparency in older versions (apparently only for palette-based
images, where the alpha value of the first palette entry is
misinterpreted as the index of the palette entry to be made fully
transparent, a la GIF); progressive display (except transparent PNGs on
Windows versions); full gamma support (assumes a file gamma of 1/2.0 for
unlabelled PNGs, vs. 1/2.2 for GIFs and JPEGs; fixed in 6.1); bogus
"out of place IHDR" errors and segfaults in Linux version 4.x or 5.x;
read-only; freeware (formerly adware/commercial).
(Version 3.50 supported PNG only via old-style plug-ins, such as PNG
Live 1.0, that supported neither transparency nor progressive
display; see Netscape Navigator above. Version 3 and possibly 4
also supported Windows 3.x, but that support was dropped from more
recent versions. Transparency support has not been verified in Symbian
versions.)

Oregano [Oregan
Networks / Castle
Technology] (TV/STB, RISC OS) - all versions; read-only; no support for PNG
background images and only binary transparency in version 1;
full alpha support as of version 2
(screenshots); full gamma support
(except for palette images, apparently); commercial. (Version 2 is
considered to be a nearly complete rewrite and is arguably a different
browser.)

Phoenix - see Mozilla / Firefox above

Safari
[Apple] (Mac OS X) - all
versions; read-only;
full alpha support;
full gamma support; freeware with partial source (back end only). (This
is a lightweight web browser based on Konqueror's rendering
engine, KHTML. Note that the underlying OS version has some effect on
PNG performance and conformance; for example, according to Dave
Hyatt, Tiger's renderers are faster and fix some gamma issues in
Panther.)

SPRYNET Mosaic [SPRY /
CompuServe] (Windows 3.x)
- all versions; read-only; full gamma support. (Also known as Mosaic
95, Mosaic in a Box for Windows 95, SPRY Mosaic 4.0
and/or AIR Mosaic. This thing used to change names and web sites
every couple of months and now appears to be completely dead.)

Spyglass Mosaic [Spyglass]
(Windows 3.x, Windows NT, Mac OS, Unix/X) - version 2.2;
read-only. (This appears to have died as a consumer product but to have
been resurrected as a variety of embedded and server products. See
Device Mosaic above and Spyglass Prism below.)

UP.Browser [Phone.com]
(cell phones) - version 3.2 and later; read-only; 8-bit (palette)
support only; commercial. (This is a "microbrowser" for cell phones,
especially those with color displays; version 3.2 is the first to support
both PNG and color.)

ViewML
[Century Software,
Monta Vista Software, et al.]
(Linux/X, Linux/MicroWindows) - all versions; read-only;
freeware (GPL) or commercial with source. (This is a lightweight web
browser, especially suited to handhelds and embedded devices. As of
late 2003, it is included as part of the PIXIL embedded environment.)

Voyager [VaporWare]
(Amiga) - version 2.7 and later (native), or any earlier version
with a PNG DataType (see the toolkits /
libraries page for a couple); read-only; progressive display; binary
transparency (with bad threshold) in version 3.0;
full alpha support in version
3.3.122 (beta) and later on "MorphOS" public beta;
JNG support with a JNG
DataType; gamma correction
enabled in version 2.96.39 and later; version 3.1 is claimed to have
"heavily improved PNG support"; update 12.5 of the V³ Image Decoders
fixes a transparency/alpha problem; requires MUI; uses libpng
and zlib; commercial / shareware. (Also known as
MindWalker in the
Amiga Technologies Surfer Pack. Version 2.7 introduced native PNG
support and was known as VoyagerNG; version 3.x is known as
V³.)

WebC [EBS]
(embedded, Win32) - version 2.3 and later; read-only;
MNG support as of version 2.4.3;
uses libmng, libpng, and zlib; commercial
(royalty-free) with C source.

WebTV [WebTV Networks /
Philips / Sony] (WebTV) - versions
since January 1999? read-only; no progressive display;
full alpha support in versions since
August 2000(?) (apparently); 32-bit alpha support (9
transparency levels; screenshots) and
binary transparency for palette images (first palette entry only,
regardless of number of transparent colors) in older releases; CSS
background-image support; commercial. (This is a web browser embedded
in a set-top box; it displays pages on a standard analog television set.
See also the WebTV Viewer for Win32, below.)

WebTV Viewer [WebTV
Networks] (Win32) - all versions? read-only;
full alpha support in version 2.5
build 117(?) and later;
CSS background-image support; freeware. (This is really a developer tool
for testing web pages against the limited resolution of WebTV
hardware [above], but it's also one of the few Windows browsers to have
excellent PNG support--along with Mozilla / Firefox /
Netscape 6.x and Opera 6.x, of course.)

XEmacs [Lucid, Sun,
UIUC, etc.] (Unix/X) -
version 19.14 and later; read-only; uses libpng and zlib.
(This is lumped in with the browsers due to W3 mode.)

XMayday [Axene]
(Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; commercial. (This was an
HTML browser for local files only; it was primarily intended to be used
for viewing documentation in HTML format, including that accompanying
Axene's other products on the office and business
apps page. Version 1.2.3 was the final release. As of March
1998, Axene appears to have folded.)

X Mosaic - see NCSA X Mosaic above

X-Smiles
[X-Smiles
Developers] (Java) - all versions (if running on Java2D, i.e.,
JDK 1.3 and later); read-only; freeware (BSD) with source. (This is a
"Java-based XML browser [that] is intended for both desktop use and
embedded network devices and to support multimedia services.")